Comedy crunch
Simon Hoggart The most popular programme on Christmas Day, with nearly 12 million viewers, was The Vicar of Dibley (BBC1), which returned for its positively final episode on New Year's Day. VoD isn't just cosy; it is all-envelopingly snug. It resembles those zip-up duvets advertised in the back of magazines, for old people to clamber in and stay alive when the winter fuel allowance runs out. Or it's like being murdered by the Abominable Dr Phibes: 'I shall immerse you in this vat of brandy butter. At first you may enjoy the experience. But as the thick, creamy substance fills your nostrils you will try to scream. No sound will emerge. . . ' That's how I felt; I realise, however, that I am in a minority.
This has been a big season for comedies ending. We are told that Green Wing (Channel 4, Thursday) will probably not be back. Just as everyone in Dibley wants to marry the vicar, even though she is monumentally obese, so all the doctors want to marry Caroline, even though she is monumentally neurotic. The problem with this series as it entered its decadence was that the producers didn't realise that you can't have surreal unless you start with real. Dalf s melting watches look like real watches, only melting. By contrast, Alan and Joanna accidentally murder a shopkeeper, then try to hide her body under cheese snacks. Moments later the generally wonderful Michelle Gomez is at her desk wearing a squirrel head. Why? GW ended like a dream — one of those dreams from which you wake up thinking, 'What a stupid dream.'
The saddest departure was Armando Iannucci's The Thick Of It (BBC4, Tuesday), which had a final one-hour special. People often asked why there was no British equivalent of West Wing and the reason is obvious. In WW people were always striding, striding, talking and striding. If you did much striding in 10 Downing Street you would bang your nose on a wall in seconds. But these were archetypal British political characters —obsessed with their own little world, petty, rivalrous, convinced they are in charge of everything around them even while it twists hopelessly out of control. The final humiliation of Peter Capaldi's Malcolm was delightful.
This Life — Ten Years On (BBC 2, Tuesday) brought together for the last time a company I missed altogether when the original series was running. So the experience was like being invited to a reunion of self-obsessed old friends whom you don't know and for whom you don't greatly care. Miles's new Vietnamese model wife hated the lot of them, and spoke for many of us newcomers when she ran screaming from the house. And was the opening — chap shouts f***, f***, f***' because he is late for a service — homage to Four Weddings and a Funeral, or just a rip-off?
But the comedy mills continue to grind. Ugly Betty (Channel 4, Friday) was the most popular new show in America last season. It also looks like a rip-off, of The Devil Wears Prada — frumpy young woman joins high-fashion magazine, weathers humiliation and wins confidence of the glamorous editor — though apparently it is based on a Latin American soap. Betty herself is sympathetic — on her first day she turns up in her most fashionable garment, a souvenir poncho marked 'Guadalajara' — and so is the helpful colleague, our own Ashley Jensen from Extras, now seemingly typecast as the friendly ear for those in professional pain. The other characters are cardboard, but that doesn't matter. If they were full, rounded individuals, Betty's plight would seem less poignant.
Desperate Housewives (Channel 4, Wednesday) is back and looks to be on much better form than the last series which was as weird as the first but, unforgiveably, was also dull and flabby. The most startling scene was when Bree, turned on by her (as we guess, homicidal) fiancé's obsessive cleaning, suddenly finds she can't wait for the wedding. His oral ministrations bring her to orgasm, which so frightens her she consults her doctor. And I thought, can you really show this on American prime-time television? They must be much less prudish than we thought.
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